BROOMFIELD, Colo. – Recounting the past year of Shane Carwin’s (11-0 MMA, 3-0 UFC) fighting life is a bit difficult. Just listen to him try.

“You get ready for a training camp, and you get your eyes on an opponent and start getting prepared for them, and then it falls through,” Carwin told MMAjunkie.com (www.mmajunkie.com). “Then a new one was there, and so you take a week off and get ready to get prepared for that fight. Then it was six weeks before that fight, and that fight fell through. Then they were going to reschedule it in January, so I took another week off.”

Despite the less-than-ideal path to his interim title shot with Frank Mir (13-4 MMA, 11-4 UFC) at UFC 111 on March 27, Carwin insists he’ll be well-prepared – and he credits his life outside of the cage for pulling him through.

“It’s definitely been a roller-coaster ride,” Carwin said. “But fighting is not the only thing I have in life. Family is first. I always have my wife and my children, and that’s the most important thing.

“Whether these fights fall through or not, I have my family, and I have a life outside of fighting. It’s very important to be balanced, I think, in life.”

Part of that life includes a full-time job as an engineer, and Carwin said that escape from the fight game has proven to far more beneficial than distracting.

“It’s a place I get to go into at work, and I get to not think about fighting for a while and actually get to use my brain,” Carwin said. “I went to college to retire in engineering. This whole fighting thing wasn’t something that when I watched the first UFC, it wasn’t like I was like, ‘Wow, I want to do that.’ It was more like, ‘Wow, those guys are [expletive] crazy.’

“Now I guess I’m just part crazy, too.”

Carwin needed just 3:24 to dispatch of his first three UFC opponents, and a March 2009 win over Gabriel Gonzaga cemented him as a legitimate threat in the heavyweight division. Unfortunately, due to a variety of scheduling issues, Carwin hasn’t fought since.

Despite having to sit on the sidelines for more than one year between fights, Carwin believes the experience could prove positive.

“I was getting prepared to go through camp again, so it’s been some ups and downs,” Carwin said. “But along the way, I’ve learned a lot – training, especially. It’s given me more time to work on technique.

“I’m obviously not the most technical guy, but I’m one of the tougher guys, I know that – maybe just a ‘blue-collar fighter’ is what you would call it. I get out there and brawl and do my best and work on as much as technique as possible. … Being able to have the great coaching staff that I have around me has helped immensely, and the more technical I can become, the better fighter I’ll become.”

Another question mark surrounding Carwin is his endurance. While the powerful heavyweight has never shown suspect conditioning, he’s also never fought longer than 2:11 in any fight. In fact, in his 11 career trips to the cage, Carwin has spent just 12:22 fighting.

“I feel comfortable going into later rounds,” Carwin said. “I think in training, anyway, I do better as the rounds tend to go on and get more relaxed and more fluid. The same can be said for wrestling. When I was in the third round, I was the one pushing guys. So in the fighting, we’ll see.

“It’s unanswered for me, too, and especially when it’s in front of 17,000 or 20,000 people. But I feel confident. We train for all that in here, and I feel good after all those rounds.”

Of course, Carwin said with a smile, it might not even matter.

“Stylistically, my style of fighting, I don’t know if I’ll ever see those last rounds,” Carwin said.

After more than a year away from competition, Carwin meets Mir in the co-main event of UFC 111. The winner will walk away with the interim title and will likely face current heavyweight champion Brock Lesnar this summer.

“I’m not concerned about that,” Carwin said. “I don’t perform my best in training. I perform my best in the octagon or on the mat, same as when I was on the football field. That’s when I perform my best, and those are the moments that I look forward to.

“A lot of people might want to call it ring rust, but to me, however the fight comes out, you go in there and you do the best you can, and you be proud of that.”

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